World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (April 5, 2011)

The Washington Post reports that Iran’s OPEC governor says there is no need for the producer group to hold an emergency meeting, even as oil prices have surged by 30 percent since February over unrest in the Arab world. Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency quoted Mohammad Ali Khatabi on Tuesday as saying that the spike in crude prices is linked to the unrest roiling several oil producing nations and that such factors are beyond the control of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The U.S. benchmark crude futures contract was hovering at around $108 per barrel while its London-based counterpart, Brent, was at $120 per barrel, gaining on fighting in Libya.

The New York Times published the article headlined “The Larger Game in the Middle East: Iran” by DAVID E. SANGER. The author says that in mid-March in the White House Situation Room, as President Obama heard the arguments of his security advisers about the pros and cons of using military force in Libya, the conversation soon veered into the impact in a far more strategically vital place: Iran. The mullahs in Tehran, noted Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, were watching Mr. Obama’s every move in the Arab world. They would interpret a failure to back up his declaration that Col. Muammar Gaddafi had “lost the legitimacy to lead” as a sign of weakness — and perhaps as a signal that Mr. Obama was equally unwilling to back up his vow never to allow Iran to gain the ability to build a nuclear weapon.

The Turkish information agency Hurriyet comments on the early presidential elections in Kazakhstan. The article on this topic says that Kazakhstan’s snap presidential elections on Sunday, which saw longtime ruler Nursultan Nazarbayev extend his tenure, have been praised by both the ruling party and the opposition candidates despite criticism from independent election observers. According to OSCE observations, the presidential elections were not completely free. There were cases of fraud. Meanwhile, both the ruling party and the opposition candidates, who reportedly by their own admission wanted the incumbent to win, have celebrated the latest elections and are already looking forward to parliamentary elections. Opposition candidates also expressed their happiness with the latest elections, saying they were looking ahead to parliamentary elections.

“Iran, Russia to work on Afghanistan” is an article published by the Iranian information agency. It says that Iran and Russia have underlined the need for joint cooperation to help restore stability in Afghanistan ahead of a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on the war-ravaged country. Head of the Iranian Foreign Ministry's Afghanistan Headquarters Mohsen Pak-Ayin and Russian president's special envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov met and held talks on Afghanistan. In the meeting, the two officials called for more cooperation in the campaign against drug trafficking and terrorism to help bring back security to Afghanistan. Pak-Ayin said that Tehran and Moscow should devise a joint plan to expand cooperation over Afghanistan.